Victim to press charges against LIRR creep

A LONG ISLAND Rail Road commuter who was targeted in a racist rant aboard the train says she plans to press charges against her tormenter.

“It’s a hate crime,” Soraya Orelien, 25, told the Daily News Friday.

“He needs to pay for what he’s done to me ... This cannot continue to happen. It’s 2018.”

Orelien spoke out a day after cell-phone footage of the man’s foulmouthed onslaught burned up social media.

The black Baruch College senior was riding the train on April 19 when the white man started lobbing vile verbal rockets at her because he thought she was talking too loudly into her phone.

“You’re a loudmouth monkey motherf-----,” spewed the man who had sat down directly in front of Orelien.

“I can’t listen to your black ass no more.”

Several sources identified the hate-filled hothead as Edward Ruggiero, a Manhattan stagehand who lives in Long Beach, L.I.

Reached outside his home, Ruggiero denied that he was the man in the video despite looking and sounding exactly like him. “It ain’t me,” Ruggiero said. “I’ve seen the video, yeah. A hundred guys at work have showed it to me, saying ‘Oh my God! It looks like you!”

Orelien had no doubt Ruggiero was her harasser after seeing a photo taken by a Daily News photographer outside his house.

“That’s definitely him,” she said.

“Of course he’s denying it. He’s embarrassed by it. The whole world saw your face. You cannot hide it.”

The incident took place about 9:45 p.m. as the train rumbled toward Jamaica en route to Long Beach.

Amid his diabolical diatribe, the racist rider got in Orelien’s face.

“He got up and turned and said, ‘I’m gonna slap the s--- out of you,’” the victim recalled.

Orelien said she tried to keep her composure as the man spouted off. He also made monkey noises as he harassed her in a verbal assault that kept up for several minutes.

“It was a disturbing and disgusting act,” said Orelien who majors in human resource management.

“I’m glad the video is out and people can see that this is unacceptable.”

The cell-phone footage captured the man getting into it with another black rider after she told him to “shut the f--- up.”

“Oh, you loudmouth the man shot back. “Like your mother,” she said. The man erupted in obscenities and racial taunts yet again.

“Do you know who your mother is?” the man shouted. “You don’t know who your mother is because you’re a f------ monkey.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it’s investigating the incident.

James Claffey Jr., president of the powerful stagehands union, said the member outed to The News has denied being the man in the video.

“Local 1 IATSE needs to do further investigation,” Claffey said.

“At the end of the day, the behavior in that video was disgraceful and not a reflection of the honor and integrity of our members.” b----,”